Thursday, March 9, 2017

"Primum non nocere" is a foundational
precept of medicine. Every healthcare student learns it, and you’ve probably
heard it before. It translates as "First, do no harm," and that deceptively
simple-seeming precept arguably acts as a driving theme of Doctor Strange –
maybe the first superhero movie since Christopher Reeve played Superman to
feature a hero who overtly rejects
killing his enemies, out of what seems like genuine ethical revulsion.

That rejection and revulsion arguably shouldn't be a
big deal, but in our current Golden Age of Superhero Cinema it's actually a pretty
big deal since no other Marvel cinematic hero seems to share that same firm
combination of rejection/revulsion*. Marvel's cinematic universe is filled with
heroic characters who nobly seek to protect people, and who routinely kill
large numbers of hydra operatives/aliens/elves/sentient robots/etc. in the
process. In stark contrast, Stephen Strange is markedly opposed to the idea of
killing anyone (even the David
Bowie-eyed cultist trying to draw the entire planet into "the dark
dimension") and he barks disdain at the idea of “righteous violence” without
hesitation or shading. Stephen Strange is indirectly responsible for the
killing of exactly one person in his
debut outing. That death is accidental (as far as Strange’s choice in the
matter goes), and he is utterly, vocally, disgusted by it.

What’s even more interesting is that the film as a
whole reflects Strange's articulated disgust with killing, and acts more
broadly as a quiet rejection of the sort of de rigor death and destruction that
superhero flicks tend to blithely dish out. Doctor Strange’s entire finale
is a literal reversal of the typical Marvel climax, namely: a lengthy fight
resulting in the deaths of many opponents, the destruction of much property. Strange’s
finale instead features the film’s protagonist engaging in a lengthy battle
that he then literally reverses - mystically turning back the clock on all of
the damage and death around him; symbolically negating the violence and returning
to the role of healer as buildings knit themselves back together and the dead are
revived before our eyes. In sharp contrast to the rest of Marvel’s
protagonists, Strange achieves his victory by outright rejecting violence as
the solution to his problems and stitching back together what has been torn
apart.

What’s more, Doctor
Strange disposes of its primary antagonist non-violently, and even
compassionately. There are other, more critical pieces out there about whether
Mads Mikkelsen’s Kaecilius is a “good villain” in the traditional cinematic sense
(is he sufficiently “evil”? Nuanced? Interesting? Colorful?). For the purposes
of this piece I’m not interested in that question. What I am interested in is
that he’s a somewhat sympathetic villain who is dealt with not via execution, but by giving him exactly what he claims to want.
That’s an unusual tact to take in these sorts of films but it’s impactful for
being unusual, and it underlines again the notion of “doing no harm.”

These details in the film advance a surprisingly
non-violent philosophy, but the film’s final confrontation triple underlines the
point as Strange faces off against (a regrettably enormous, computer-generated,
non-flaming) Dormammu and promptly dies.

…And dies.

And dies and dies and dies and dies and dies and
dies and dies.

And dies.

The final battle between good and evil in Doctor
Strange doesn't involve a battle at all actually; it doesn’t feature feats
of physical strength or morally murky decisions to do violence or morally
defensible decisions to kill an enemy or the deaths of hundreds/thousands of
mindless ones. The final battle between good and evil involves Stephen Strange simply
and sincerely and selflessly** sacrificing himself
– over and over and over again, like a psychedelic Christ at the foot of a
black-light Golgotha. It involves Strange voluntarily enduring life-ending pain
in dozens upon dozens of different combinations in order to spare the world condemnation
to an eternity of suffering. Doctor Strange is here to die for your sins in a
rockin' cape, people.

Director Scott Derrickson speaks openly in
interviews about his faith, and as a result it isn't hard to see evidence of its
influence in Strange's self-sacrifice. However, nothing about that choice
demands that you view it through any kind of faith lens. Regardless of your
personal beliefs the final confrontation between Strange and Dormammu is
unusual and original, smart, giddily rousing, and oddly moving simply because
it defies convention and embraces the nobility of sacrifice over the easier
catharsis of violence. I grew up loving comics, and the rise of the Golden Age
of superhero cinema has been incredibly exciting for me, but even I’m frankly
tired of watching heroes slay hordes of literally or figuratively faceless
henchmen; as if their status as cannon fodder justifies their use as cannon fodder. And as Strange
returns from death over and over, shouting about bargains, one can see a
viable, creative alternative to the sort of diminishingly impactful, high-body
count carnage we’ve been acclimated to.

And that’s quietly Marvelous.

__________

*I would argue that there’s a valid ethical distinction to be drawn between (1) Stephen Strange, who rejects killing outright, (2) Steve Rogers, who doesn’t want to kill anyone but will and does, and, (3) Scott Lang (Ant-Man), who manages not to intentionallykill anyone during the course of his movie and who also voices no opinion on the matter whatsoever. “Do no harm” is an articulated mission statement in Doctor Strange, backed up by Strange’s actual behavior and choices.

**All of that said, it would be a mistake to assign too much selflessness to the character
of Stephen Strange. What keeps the character flawed and interesting – what makes
the promise of a sequel even more tantalizing than fancy effects – is that
Strange is still dangerously self-certain and arguably selfish, and his
definition of “doing harm” is (perhaps unavoidably) subjective.

After all, "Primum no nocere" is, like
most precepts, much more complicated than it seems. "Do no harm"
doesn't just mean “don’t kill anyone,” nor does it equate to “save a life at
any cost.” It’s a much broader, much more morally flexible idea, one that says “it
may be better not to do something, or
even to do nothing, than to risk causing more harm than good.”

Take that broader, more flexible idea and apply it
to the film and suddenly Mordo’s point of view starts to make a lot of sense.
Yes, Strange saves the world by acting as he does but in the process he risks causing
much more harm than good. Turning back time has real consequences; large,
potentially universe-altering consequences that Strange does not really seem to
think or care about. He is, selfishly and arguably narcissistically, most concerned
about saving lives at literally any cost – even irreparably damaging the fabric
of space and time. He is, to the end, cavalier in his approach to heroism and
while it works out for him in this one instance there is a very good ethical
argument that, in the broader sense, Strange remains arrogant and
impulse-driven in genuinely dangerous ways.

What makes Mordo an interesting foil to Strange
(despite the unfortunate lack of time devoted to more fully develop his
character – an issue I would expect to see addressed head-on in any sequel) is that they are both blind in one eye, and
are handily representative of two competing, inherently conflicting schools of
thought.

On the one hand, Strange is right: life is really complicated,
moral grays are a fact of that life, and Mordo is being far too rigid by rejecting
that fact and opting for a fanatical absolutism. The Ancient One can be both
well-intentioned and flawed in her choice to take power from dubious sources. One
does not necessarily cancel out the other.

On the other hand, Mordo is right: Strange is reckless, and although he seems to accept the moral grays that
Mordo cannot, he simply accepts a
different set of moral grays. Where Mordo cannot abide the way that
sorcerers bend the laws of nature without regard for the consequences, Strange similarly
cannot abide the thought of deference to the laws of nature.

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